The economics of 2nd hand models

[sneakyben]

[Sorry if this is the wrong section, but it didn't seem to fit in the bazaar section as it is not an actuall ad (yet)]

I have a painted/assembled 10500pt collection of IG and SM...
to recreate what I have from scratch, from a GW store, would be about £1700...

(I think a fair way to describe the painting is: Reasonably neatly base-coated
The collection has basically every sort of model, chimeras, leman russes, valkyries, land raiders and loads of all kind of infantry http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/9093/picture2ad.jpg and http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/6220/picture1jdr.jpg )

I want to sell the whole lot to fund a 2nd round of more focused miniature collecting

I don't have the time to break it all down into lots of small ebay lots, but I am guess people who do that sort of thing would be interested in this whole lot?

What should price should I be looking at? £200? £500?

[Deadlift]

I would expect that lot to easily fetch £400 plus on eBay. What I have done in the past is put my army lots on at the free insertion auction of 99p. I usually add plenty of nice pictures and I generally get what I want for my models. It is a risk though as someone could get a bargain and you could be disappointed. However with the 5 or so armies I have sold I was always happy with what I got.
I personally sell to UK only as the cost of shipping large items abroad can be expensive and put people off bidding higher for the actual item.

It can be quite nail biting stuff as for the 1st few days it always feels that your only going to get £20 for a huge army. But I found on eBay at least the bid usually rockets up and I have sometimes seen hundreds of pounds added in the last few minutes of the auction time.

I usually put my items up with a 99p starting bid with a final buyout amount of what I would be happy with too. Its only happened once but you can be quite cheeky.

You do have a ton of stuff there so you may want to split it down into a couple of lots, army specific.

But my main bit of advice is ship to uk only, if it costs £60 to ship an item then it could be £60 less then you could have in your pocket. Of course you can charge for shipping but bidders will take into account the shipping cost and bid less accordingly.

Its also worth adding if you have any limited models that are out of production, then its worth selling them separately.

Good luck Sneakyben

[chromedog]

Usually, 2nd hand army stuff goes for no more than 50% of the current prices. Unless it is exceptionally well painted - in which case you could probably get retail+10%.

This is not really an "investment" hobby (GW stuff). Model trains are an investment hobby.

[MaltonNecromancer]

Frankly, if you were to sell that lot for £200, I'd take it off your hands now, so you should definitely ask for more. Unless you want to sell it all to me for £200. Which I am okay with. :)

If you want a quick sale, be prepared to lose a lot of money. Job lots tend to sell for a "large" sum of money, but not relative to how much they cost. If you're okay with that, put it up for £500, and if it doesn't sell, £400, etc...

Can you not break it down into chunks? Say, tank squadrons? Those tend to sell quite well, and you'll probbly make between £50 to £60 for three.

If the painting's bad, that knocks a huge amount of cash off. If it's no good (and you might want to post it on coolminiornot to get a reasonable idea of whether it is or not), then you might want to consider stripping down some of the more expensive HQ/Elite choices.

[Col.Gravis]

It depends entirely on the models in question, vehicles hold their value quite well for example, so unless they are butchered I'd expect to get at least 2/3 of current RRP, plastic infantry dont hold their value at all, I'd expect 1/3 of RRP as being a more realisitic extiation. Metals are an exception to this however, and certain models will do very well, 2/3 is easily possible, and in some cases, especially where replaced by Finecast or OOP they may even exceed RRP.

Don't short change yourself.

[Bean]

Yeah, I think if you're selling that stuff as a lot, you should be looking to get about half retail out of it, tops. You might get as much as 15 or 20 percent more selling it in smaller lots (individual squads / vehicles / vehicle squadrons) but it's likely that you probably won't get rid of all of it this way--odds are, you'll end up with some chaff you'll end up having to sell off as a fairly cheap lot at the end, and this route means you'll spend more on auctions and shipping, so keep that in mind.

I would probably try separating it into two lots: an IG lot and an SM lot (finding the guy who's both looking to add to an SM army and an IG army at the same time will be more difficult than finding a guy who's buying IG and a guy who's buying SM). It depends on what proportion of your stuff is in each one, of course, but it looks like you'll probably be able to put both up for 250-300 pounds and get bites.

[JxKxR]

As a veteran ebay buyer I can tell you a few things I've noticed.

1. Painted models, even nicely painted models, go for less. The buyer want's what they buy to fit in with their existing armies. I've seen models painted really good go for around 20%-30% LESS than retail. Badly painted models can go for 50%-60% less than retail. (I was able to get 8 thousand sons and a sorcerer for $20 and free shipping. Retail on them from GW is $41.25.) However base coated models don't really hurt and if they are base coated well they can actually help add to the value. It looks like you've done some nice base coating so you should show that off, which brings me to my next point, pictures.

2. Really take some time to take plenty of pictures with good lighting. Buyers love pictures because they know exactly what they are buying looks like. No one likes opening a box full of models that look like a monkey glued them together or that the base coat is to thick.

3. You have to at least split it up like Bean suggests. Like he said finding someone who wants both IG and SM is going to be hard to find.

4. Put plenty of time on the auction, a good amount of time is a week, so more people know about it and are watching. The last day is when you will see the bids start to go up so make sure it ends on a really good day. Think about when the most people will be at home in front of their computer, hopefully with plenty of money burning holes in their pockets. Personally I think late Friday night the second or third week of a month is the best time. After bills have been paid and they have a full pay check to play around with.

Hope this helps, Good luck selling your stuff fella!

[Bean]

Yes--definitely. Lots of pictures, and good ones!

Invest in a large sheet of light blue posterboard to use as a backdrop. When you set up your shots, the poster-board should fill the entire frame, curving from the table surface to up against the back wall in a consistent (and wrinkle-free) fashion. Again, more light is always better, and, with the amount of stuff you're posting, more pictures are basically always better, too.

[Deadlift]

And if your not too familiar with using a camera trying using one that has a Macro setting (most digital do). This will allow you to take pictures much closer to the models without blurryness becoming a problem. Most cameras use a flower symbol to show the macro function. As has been said lots of pictures is very good as not only is it good for the buyer to see exactly what their bidding on but it's also your insurance too against someone complaining to eBay that they bought your stuff and it didn't match the description. Some buyers do try it on just to get a partial refund. But with lots of good quality pictures and a disclaimer in your description saying something like "the items will be packed securely but because of the nature of the items I can't be held responsible for breakages during transit" will cover you well.

Other things that will really improve the sale of your stuff is to include the codex and an army case. That helps when selling complete army's.

But I can't stress enough the importance of giving a very good description that points out all the good things but also the bad too.

Here is an example of a good eBay ad.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Warhammer-40K-Pro-Painted-Ultramarine-Space-Marine-Army-Classic-2nd-Edition-/290658739533?pt=UK_Toys_Wargames_RL&hash=item43ac9c654d#ht_500wt_1413

[Aldramelech]

People go to ebay for a bargin, I don't tend to buy anything for more then half the retail price and am quite strict with myself about letting things go that rise above that.

In an ideal world you'll get lucky and get a couple of bidders that get all "macho" about it :) I've seen it happen, its like watching an episode of Storage Wars!

[Lockark]

It looks like you could break all that up into about 4 armies. I would considering doing that, as you should be able to get abit more then if you sold it all in one go.

At the very least split it up into a IG and SM lot.

[sneakyben]

Thanks for the input guys...

I sold the whole lot in one go for £425 cash on Gumtree (the bloke came to collect them this morning)...
(Ad up on the 20th, agreed sale on 21st, actual sale 22nd)

So I got exactly 25% of my guestimate buy-new-from-GW value
(Given that the I got a lot of the models originally at lower-than-GW-cost I reckon I recouped about 30-40% of what I bought them for)

The whole selling process was completely hassle free and I didn't have to mess about with ebay...
Yes, I could have made more money, but I don't feel the hassle would have been worth it
(and to be honest I got more money than I planned for)

[Bean]

Thanks for the input guys...

I sold the whole lot in one go for £425 cash on Gumtree (the bloke came to collect them this morning)...
(Ad up on the 20th, agreed sale on 21st, actual sale 22nd)

So I got exactly 25% of my guestimate buy-new-from-GW value
(Given that the I got a lot of the models originally at lower-than-GW-cost I reckon I recouped about 30-40% of what I bought them for)

The whole selling process was completely hassle free and I didn't have to mess about with ebay...
Yes, I could have made more money, but I don't feel the hassle would have been worth it
(and to be honest I got more money than I planned for)

Sounds like you did pretty well, actually. Nice work.